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Anime Streaming Apps Available on Xbox Live: More Arriving Today?

Microsoft is continuing to push the more-popular-than-games media apps.

Microsoft looks to be appealing to every niche as anime streaming media apps are available

Media apps are more popular on the Xbox 360 than games, which isn’t for everyone’s liking. To be honest it’s not for mine, either, because I primarily use my Xbox 360 for playing games and not watching media, though the two new released – and upcoming apps – obviously disagree.

The newly release apps are Manga Entertainment and Muzu.TV. Manga Entertainment, as you might have surmised, provides users access to full length episodes, movies and clips of anime. Basically, the Netflix equivalent of anime content.

Muzu.TV currently has almost 40,000 videos of past and present musicians. Manga Entertainment is U.S.-only for now, while Muzu.TV is available in the States and Canada. An update to Foxtel, and on demand TV app in Australia, was announced bringing Kinect support.

Microsoft is strongly pushing out apps for the Xbox 360, though I question if people are using all of them. The majority of people will be using services such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and the BBC iPlayer. I’m confident people who are watching anime already have trusted sources for that content, so whether the Xbox 360 makes new ground in that area remains to be seen.

There’s also the issue of Microsoft alienating their audience. Yes, they have games such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 releasing this year. However, gamers tuning into E3 want to see exactly that: games. Showing off lots of uninteresting Kinect software, as Microsoft did last year, won’t leave many happy. Games like Halo 4 should be the showpiece of the conference, not the latest Kinect shovelware titles.

Also, Sony’s strong run of form with the PlayStation 3 – including price cuts and well-received third-party titles -, along with Nintendo and the Wii U, means Microsoft can’t slip up.

Time Warner, HBO Go, Roku apps?

There are also suggestions Time Warner, HBO and Roku will be releasing apps for the Xbox 360 today. Tech website Engadget uploaded screenshots of the apps on the Xbox 360, and its sources say Time Warner customers will be able to use HBO Go on Samsung TVs and Blu-Ray players.

Written by:Jon Charles Jonathan is a writer on the technology and video game industries. He is comfortable with using Mac OS X and Windows; he began using Windows with Windows XP during his early double-digit years, and started using OS X in 2009 on a MacBook Pro. He began gaming on the SNES back in the 90s.